M5 has similar metal score as m3 pro and m2 pro. Once games are updated to use metal 4 and metal fx 5 should punch above his weight.
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If Apple was actually serious about gaming and wanted to create it's own version of a Steam Machine how should they do it?
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M5 has similar metal score as m3 pro and m2 pro. Once games are updated to use metal 4 and metal fx 5 should punch above his weight.
You misunderstand both my comments.
• Re: the AVP, what I actually said was that games would evolve on the AVP. My point was that it would be a mistake for Apple to focus on AVP gaming, because it would help pigeonhole AVP into very limiting 2020s VR thinking - - which IMO is already a huge problem here as I read AVP commentary. Where you get anything about "apologise for Apple" ?? I have no clue. Apple certainly needs no apologizing for the very cool AVP tech introduction.
• Re: HomePods, my comment was in response was to the absurd statement that HomePods could not be used on Macs because of latency issues. My observation was that HomePods are superb on Macs for music in small difficult spaces. I did not say latency was fine, what I said was that using $600 pair of speakers for system sounds and UTube was not what I spent $600 [actually more when I bought mine IIRC] on speakers to do. I have used mine daily in challenging music usages for ~6 years now and never even noticed latency as an issue; all I do is marvel at the great sound in an impossible acoustic environment.
Do note that latency [both in displays and in speakers] is a separate parameter that sometimes matters, but often does not matter. And when we prioritize short latency it always means some other parameter will be less good. For gamers latency is important; for image pros like me different sets of characteristics are important. To each his/her own.
Again, even Max series aren't as good as console's GPU. Using Metal is irrelevant especially since all games are Windows based.
I am not convinced gaming is even a priority for the vision pro (starting to see a trend here). It feels like Apple is focusing on 3 main areas - spatial photos / videos to relive memories, Apple TV content, and doubling as an external monitor for your Mac. None of them having anything to do with games.
And those tasks in no way justifies the 3,500 - 4,000 dollar price tag
Apple’s keen on the gaming that makes the most money, day in and day out. And, Ternus taking over would not change the fact that they’re making massive amounts of money just producing gadgets that people want to buy, then providing a place for developers that want to sell products to those people.
They do the same for the Mac, but the developers don’t want to sell products to those people. Some of the big companies that aren’t investing in the Mac own subsidiaries that are making a KILLING on iOS. They don’t have anything against the Mac, just against putting efforts into activities that won’t bring the largest ROI.
Exactly this!
What we're really seeing now is cross-compatibility from iOS / iPadOS back to the Mac, not the mobile experience as a "cut down" version of the desktop.
Without doing too much in terms of R&D investment or hardware-specific optimizations, mobile game devs have the Mac as a bonus platform. It's extra potential revenue at lower cost.
In theory they could tune things to take advantage of desktop chips, or at least provide "turbo" settings (ray tracing, quality, etc.). Or simply rely on macOS's implementation of Game Mode to auto-optimize things.
So maybe the fundamental error here is seeing mobile and desktop as separate platforms when under the hood they are mostly the same platform with different viewport sizes and some varying capabilities.
TBH I personally don't need AAA graphics to sell me on a game; to me, the size of the environment, the number of things to discover / do, and whether it's fun matters more.
If the graphics are too realistic, it gets into uncanny valley territory, and can makes it harder for me to see what's going on.
I've always preferred cel-shaded games with believable, but not photorealistic environments -- things like Abzu, The Pathless, Rime, Dark Cloud 1 & 2 (PS2), the SSX series, Okami, BOTW / TOTK -- and "toy shader / tilt-shift" types of games like Animal Crossing, Link's Awakening, Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, etc.
So the question for me is: Would Apple take the plunge to acquire, or start, their own first-party studio?
The fundamental mistake is focusing on the device. Peripherals have a bigger impact on the gaming experience than the CPU, the GPU, and the OS.
I usually play on a 34" ultrawide monitor with a keyboard and a mouse. Sometimes those peripherals are connected to AMD/Nvidia hardware and sometimes to Apple hardware. There is not much difference between the two, except the availability of games.
When I travel, the monitor is replaced by a laptop screen, and the experience is usually not as good. Sometimes it even feels stressful, because a 16" display is too small for the games I play.
I could not imagine playing the same games on an 11" tablet.
This is probably one of the biggest reasons why I haven't purchased a Steam Deck. I prefer gaming with a keyboard and mouse. I have a PS5 and use a controller, but overall the keyboard/mouse cominbation is so much more superior for me. Additionally, the smaller screen on the steam deck is a huge detraction for me and my poor eyesight.
I may eventually get a steam deck, but I can see getting a steam machine over the steam deck. I can see the steam deck replacing my PS5. I would much rather play a game in my recliner and 55 inch tv then on my recliner hunched over looking at a 7" screen
Nah man. The computer is what is most important.
The internal display of gaming laptops such as the Lenovo Legion Pro cannot be beaten by an external monitor. 240hz 1ms latency OLED panel at very high pixel density / Retina quality.
In terms of quality, only my Apple Studio Display comes close, which is basically 5K gaming. Now my RTX 5080 can run games at 5K resolution at max settings with full Ray Tracing on, but the Apple Studio Display is missing the 240hz at 1ms latency and you do notice the difference.
My big 4K @ 120hz Samsung TV just looks bad with the very low pixel density in comparison to the Lenovo Legion Pro OLED 16" display and my Apple Studio Display.
Really, computer > all. The displays that comes with 2025 gaming machines (especially those that have OLED displays) are outstanding. Now you do need to do a "color correction" as out of the box, they are "too vibrant", in order to bring the colors more in line with Mac's and iPad's.
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For me, it's pretty much this. For all of my gaming needs, which are primarily indie, older AAA and retro games (some off of Steam, but mostly from GOG), my M2 MacBook Air is more than enough.
Gamers really need to let go of the idea that the only valid or meaningful form of "gaming" is massively overspecced gaming computers running the latest and greatest AAA releases.
I dunno if this has been said, but the beauty of what Valve is doing is that they are building the infrastructure for a world where games just work anywhere, on anything. They have hinted that the next SteamDeck will be ARM based. They have their own version of Rosetta. There is no reason to believe that in a few years virtually every steam game won't just work on a Mac the way that X86 Apps do through rosetta or the way that Windows games do on SteamOS. The hardware is capable and the software is maturing.
In five years I strongly believe that the translation layers will be so powerful and transparent that as long as you have the power to run it and it doesn't use anticheat, you'll be able to play anything on Steam flawlessly on the Mac (and other ARM machines). You can almost do it now with Crossover.
In five years I strongly believe that the translation layers will be so powerful and transparent that as long as you have the power to run it and it doesn't use anticheat, you'll be able to play anything on Steam flawlessly on the Mac (and other ARM machines). You can almost do it now with Crossover.
Absent hardware that is markedly better than what Intel, AMD, and Nvidia are offering (which Apple cannot currently provide), Apple isn't going to win in the gaming space, especially with its current generation of sealed-box/non-upgradable machines. There is just no reason why gamers would pay Apple prices for RAM and storage and give up the customization and upgradability that they get with x86_64 hardware, and no reason for developers to put time into optimizing their games to run well on the platform. If anything, Linux has a better chance as a gaming platform than MacOS due to Steam's efforts.
The Pippin failed in the '90s for the same reason--there was no demand for an incompatible, overpriced, device with lackluster performance.
Now, if Apple actually could surpass Intel/AMD/Nvidia's latest hardware by a significant margin, that would change things, but that change would take many years. I just don't see how it's a market worth pursuing. Apple's current strengths are in portable, efficient hardware, and a somewhat sane OS. None of that really matters when running games on a desktop machine.
The Pippin failed in the '90s for the same reason--there was no demand for an incompatible, overpriced, device with lackluster performance.
Now, if Apple actually could surpass Intel/AMD/Nvidia's latest hardware by a significant margin, that would change things, but that change would take many years. I just don't see how it's a market worth pursuing. Apple's current strengths are in portable, efficient hardware, and a somewhat sane OS. None of that really matters when running games on a desktop machine.
Gamers have let go of this idea. The value of a Steam Machine is definitely not in its specs, but in the console-like UX for gaming on a couch, the wider Steam gaming ecosystem, and being a device built by a single company, from the OS to the gamepad.
I'm not much of a gamer any more, I don't have the time or energy for it, but I do still enjoy playing something when I have the time to unwind.
I haven't bothered to upgrade my now antique and essentially unused gaming PC for a while now. So if a game doesn't run on macOS, or on my i5 9400F/RX 580, then I'm not playing it. Frankly, even if my PC can run it, odds are good I won't be playing it. I can't be bothered going dragging out my PC just to play a game, so Train Sim World and a good portion of my Steam library goes unplayed and I keep playing Farm Sim, Snowrunner, Civ VI, or Subnautica: Below Zero on my Mac.
I don't think that's accurate.
Here's the steam survey for the top GPUs and I do no see any massively overspecced gpu. I'm not a hard core gamer, but one thing I do want is the ability to run the greatest AAA releases.
As for my games, I needed to get a M4 Max Studio to play the AAA games I'm interested in, the M4 Mini and M4 Pro were not capable of running those games, so I had to get the more expensive Studio - now don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the studio. Its the best desktop computer I've had in a very long time but the point is that Apple's M4 and M4 Pro was insufficient.
Not even close in my book.
The Steam deck is a handheld computer running a version of Linux/Wine and is capable of running Most AAA games. When I owned the M4 Pro Mini and tried to play AAA games using crossover (wine), it was incapable of handling many older games never mind AAA current games.
This is not a hardware issue, it’s a software/ecosystem issue. It would make sense to keep these separate. M4 (and M5 in particular) is capable enough. The problem is that games are not developed/tested for these platforms, and these are business decisions, not technical limitations. That’s a tougher nut to crack.
When M1 was first introduced, I was very optimistic about developers targeting Apple Silicon. Years later, things are somewhat better, but still far from what would be possible. Maybe Metal 4 will improve some things, it’s been designed with DX12 compatibility in mind, so there is a chance that porting and API emulation will become more efficient.
I’m responding to your statement that the MacBook Air is equivalent to the Steam Deck, which I don’t believe is an accurate comparison. I’m looking at this from an apples-to-apples perspective. The Steam Deck uses an AMD APU and runs games through Proton, which is a version of WINE.
In comparison, an M4 Pro Mac mini running similar games through CrossOver (also based on WINE) delivered inferior performance. In my experience, the consistently low frame rates and the amount of heat generated by the Mac mini led me to return it and purchase a Studio instead.
I’m not attempting to justify the native gaming capabilities of the M4 (or M5). Rather, my point is focused on macOS gaming performance when using WINE, and how that experience compares directly to the Steam Deck, which is also running games through a WINE-based compatibility layer.
I believe we had similar conversations several times in the past. There appears to be a mismatch in our perspectives. I am approaching this from the capabilities angle, you appear to be focused at the current usability. Both have their merits, and yours obviously makes a lot of sense from the perspective of a user that needs to make a decision what to purchase.
The reason why I replied as I did because OP was asking about building a hardware platform matching the Machine in capabilities. I view this question as a technical one, and I believe that Apple already has a suitable platform. As far as I am concerned, asking “what can Apple do to drive platform adoption by game studios” is a different question.
A d finally, on the usability topic, as you correctly point out WINE runs slower on macOS compared to Steam Deck. There are several reasons for that, including the facts that Proton is a product with significant commercial backing, and that some API translation patterns might have been extra costly before Metal 4. My point is that the current Apple hardware severely underperforms running the common software stack.
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Capability and usability are closely linked, and my response was directed at your assertion that Apple already has a Steam Machine equivalent. Based on firsthand experience, there is no true equivalency between the Steam Deck and an M4-based system—particularly a passively cooled one like the MacBook Air.
When comparing the M4 to the AMD APU inside the Steam Deck, it’s easy to conclude that Apple silicon is superior from a raw CPU standpoint, and I don’t dispute that. However, when it comes to real-world gaming performance, the Steam Deck consistently outperforms the M4 when games are run through CrossOver. That isn’t splitting hairs; it reflects practical, real-world results and directly challenges the claim that the MacBook Air is a Steam Machine equivalent.
Comparing the Deck to the Air seems disingenuous. No one is running Deck settings on the Air, so of course performance is going to be worse.
As it is the Machine is going to be doing some crazy upscaling to hit the 4k couch gaming "promise" that has been touted, and Apple's upscaler is better looking than the one Valve will be using (unless AMD pull a rabbit out of hat and ports FSR4).
The steam machine is an unreleased desktop, where as the steam deck and the MBA are out in the wilds that comparison is fair
Let me reword my post, When Leman mentioned that apple already has a steam machine, I took that to be the steam deck, not an unreleased product. Additionally comparing the m4 capabilities vs the steam deck's capabilities is fair imo
The bulk of my point is you were making performance comparisons when the systems in question were not running at the same settings. Your M4 Mac Mini would likely have been fine to run the games you play if you were willing to live with reduced settings (and lower resolution).